Paul's Tech Talk

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

PaulNovember 25, 2008

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket A600 Modem Review Or the UM185 Broadband modem. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

After a full week of playing around with this USB wireless, I wanted to talk about it. So let’s break it down into pieces.

(USB Broadband A600 Modem card for Free after Instant online rebates and Mail in rebate Free shipping & first month free! Shop today.)

Installation – The installation of the USB was not to difficult. I did have to do some more steps than this: Install the Software, then hooked up the USB device to the USB port.

Manual Activated the Broadband – For some reason in my area they had several people have problems with the broadband activation. So I had to activate it manually!!

After that all went well, I was on the internet just a cruising along. I did however wonder why I was getting such a slow response speed. When I went traveling I thought I would share some of my local results with you to better show you my speed. All these test were done at

Please see an updated post on how to get even more speed from the broad band modem.
This speed is not the true speed for the broad band modem.

The Percentages over the results are showing you just what my signal strength was when I was doing the test. Two of the 4 were traveling on the highway and the other two were stationary. I also know that my speed will vary along with signal strength, I know I have to be a mile or less from a tower to get 100%.

*Update* 12/21/08

In my other post I talk about why I didn’t get the speed I expected, but after I did the activation, I went to normal Mobile Broadband speeds. I also now have been using the USB Modem for my main internet without any or much problems. I know I can’t play any major online games but I can at least have the internet with me were ever I go. As long as you stay in the coverage area, you should be in good shape. . Like I Said I’ve used it in my area for over a 1 month and with the small little problem, the speed has been really dependable and I haven’t had any major issue with connectivity. I’ve been using this modem as my main internet and have not seen any major internet and have not seen any of the cap come my way. I think they won’t mind to much as long as you don’t ABUSE the internet, for example don’t use it for bittorrent downloads and you should be fine!!

Update 12/24/2008
I also did travel with my laptop to another city, and I got to say it was really good and how it did when I went from one city to another. Check out the report here.
According to some post and forum talks around the the internet they are talking about the soft cap of 5 Gigabytes but that seems to not be so important right now. After all, they have to make money some how. I will update as necessary when I find anything else out.

update 1/01/09

I also did a video and uploaded it to youtube using the broadband connection. I had no problem uploading this video to Youtube. I’ve embedded it in this web page. See it on the bottom:

I also bought the A600 Cricket modem and I absolutely love this modem because of the things you can do with it.

Citigroup bank might be saved through the recession.

PaulNovember 24, 2008

According to reports from ABC News, Citibank is having a hard time and might need to be assisted by the government.

[ad#ad2-right]The company has seen its shares lose 60 percent of their value in the past week, reflecting a crisis of confidence among skittish investors. They are worried all the risky debt on Citigroup’s balance sheet will turn into losses as the economy worsens and the markets stay turbulent — losses that could be nearly impossible to reverse.

[via ABC News]

Although this is somewhat expected, I don’t think we can afford to pay the debt of a bank. We are all having to deal with this recession. I don’t know how they can afford to pay for Citigroup and expect this to help bolster the economy. I guess only time will tell!!!

Google SearchWiki dies after two days!!

PaulNovember 22, 2008

According to Techcrunch Google Pulls the Google SearchWiki. Unsure as to way but here’s what they said:

Users are reporting that the recent changes to Google’s search engine, called SearchWiki, have simply disappeared from the site. It’s certainly gone from my account.

[ad#ad2-right]User reactions were mixed but weighted heavily towards “this is lame,” and there was no way to turn off the features other than to conduct Google searches without being logged in. Another way to turn it off was to switch search engines.

[via TechCrunch]

I’ve got my theory on this, and it’s quite a good theory. I think it was a making search results come up wrong or not at all. The last two days they’ve had that going my page views have drop BIG time. According to my Stats I’ve had 236 Unique Visits for Thursday, and 232 Wednesday. My Friday stats show that I only got 185 Unique Visits, dropping 40 to 50 people. My stats for today which is incomplete shows that I’ve only gotten 136 unique visits. Although that is complete you can see where I dropped drastically. I think Google was getting yelled at by websites due to the stats dropping. I am guessing people could tell if they wanted to go to a site just by reading the comments. This will hurt every site, including TechCrunch. I will say this is only a theory and this might or might not be the case.

This however is the best possible explanation that I could come up with. Do you know why they did that? I don’t know?

Youtube gets ready to Launch “LIVE Event!!” 5pm PST/8pm EST

PaulNovember 22, 2008

As the time approaches for the live even for Youtube. There are many confirmed and only one I want to see right now. As many people will agree that Mythbusters is the best show on Discovery Channel. They have been confirmed to be there tomorrow.

Some of the major players confirmed to be there are Mythbusters, Soulja Boy Tell’em, Katy Perry, Esmee Denters, Akon, FRED, and Will. I. Am. Now I don’t know all these stars. I do Know Mythbusters and I’ve heard of FRED. I’m just stating who is going to be there.

[ad#ad2-left]Then the Obvious question comes to my mind and I am sure this is being asked by everyone right now. Is Mythbusters shows coming to Youtube? I would say from what all is going on with Youtube, they might become a competitor to Hulu. With them adding High Defination Viewing and allowing bigger video to be uploaded. There is no question that Youtube and Google is getting ready to release a major statement, or change there direction. So be ready tomorrow at 8 PM EST/5 PM PST and let’s see what happens.

Google Creates the ultimate Search Wiki!!

PaulNovember 21, 2008

Google has started to do let people rate the searches and help find the better articles. Google is calling it Searchwiki. Here is a screen shot:

[ad#ad2-left]You can now help judge and rate search results. You can also X out the ones that are not right. I am going to play around with this even more. It started out on Google Trends and Now people are all wanting to know more about this. This could help my site even more. I want to know what others are thinking about this? Is this Good or can this be good for the spammers? You decide.

Some other Websites talking about this are:

TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal

ZDNet

These are just a few but I wanted to let you see what other websites are talking about this new feature. I do want to hear what you think about all this and what is likely to come later on?